Witness Testimony Details Hal Turner’s FBI Role

With the FBI paying for his plane ticket, white supremacist Hal Turner flew to Brazil on behalf of the National Alliance because a Brazilian had offered to donate money to the neo-Nazi group, a government witness testified today. As the government began presenting its case during the second day of Turner’s trial, testimony from several FBI agents provided a glimpse into Turner’s former role as a confidential informant known as “Valhalla.” The blogger and Internet radio host is charged with threatening to assault and murder three federal judges in Chicago. Motivated partly by money, Turner provided intelligence on leaders of prominent white supremacist groups, including the National Alliance and Aryan Nations, according to Special Agent Amy Pickett, who supervised the FBI agent handling Turner during Turner’s first two years as an informant. In one instance, his reports led to the arrest and conviction of an Aryan Nations leader, she said. “His information was always valid and true; he gave very good information,” Pickett said. She did not elaborate on Turner’s excursion to Brazil in early 2005. But according to FBI documents filed in federal court, the trip allowed Turner to identify 12 people of interest to the FBI, including an Arab who talked about doing business with Turner in order to provide supplies to Iraqi insurgents.

via Witness Testimony Details Hal Turner’s FBI Role | Hatewatch | Southern Poverty Law Center.

siehe auch: Opening Arguments: Turner’s FBI Role to be Central
Posted in Trial Updates by Sonia Scherr on December 2, 2009. Domestic terrorist who encouraged fellow white supremacists to kill federal judges? Or shock jock who provided valuable information to the FBI? Government prosecutors and defense lawyers offered strikingly different portraits of Hal Turner (for a short 2003 profile, go here), the New Jersey-based blogger and Internet talk show host, during opening statements this morning at his federal trial. Turner has been charged with threatening to assault and murder three federal judges in Chicago after he wrote on his blog that they “deserve to die” and posted their photographs and work addresses.